To All: Attached find the Londay Sunday Times of 8/4/96 concerning the Olympic bombing, and the alleged involvement of the militia. My response to the editor ends the posting. In Liberty, Mike Kemp August 4 1996 [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] [Frontpage] [Contents button] [Britain section] [World section] [Business section] [Sport section] [Review section] [Innovation section] [money section] [Book section] [Personal Times] by Maurice Chittenden Atlanta Next page: $2bn bid to fight terror [Image] _ Loner: Richard Jewell was acclaimed at first, then accused Atlanta bomber ­ or media victim? HE DRIVES an old pick-up truck, that icon of Southern culture which earned the organisers of the Olympic Games so much derision when it was included in the opening ceremony. He is an inadequate, overweight man prone to fantasies who lives at home with his mother. Does that make him the Olympic bomber? It has been the longest week in Richard Jewell's miserable life. First, the 33-year-old security guard was hailed as a hero for finding the device and moving people to safety. Then he was fingered as the prime suspect for planting it in the first place. This weekend Americans are asking if he has unwittingly played a third role, that of media victim. While the FBI has combed through his home, his clothes and his truck looking for clues to the bombing, the media have raked over his life. America has read his school reports, learnt that he was so desperate to become a police officer that he was once arrested for impersonating one, discovered that having once made the grade he was demoted for crashing his car and then lost another job as a guard on a college campus for being overzealous. The revelation that he once rented a lonely cabin brought immediate comparisons with the 18-year hunt for the so-called "Unabomber". WGST, an Atlanta radio station that revels in its title of "official Olympic information system", has been one of the biggest accusers. Sean Hannity, its morning presenter, said: "There is a lot of speculation that a 33-year-old man who is unmarried, who lives with his mother, has got to be a weirdo, has got to be a potential terrorist." Last week Jewell sat on the stairwell of his mother's two-bedroom flat off Atlanta's Buford highway with his head in his hands. An army of journalists was camped outside. When two FBI agents arrived to question him, a dozen television cameras zoomed in over their shoulders. The FBI admits it has no firm evidence to connect him to the bomb. Yes, it has found concrete nails in his apartment. But what would Hannity make of a 33-year-old man who did not own any nails? Nor was Jewell the first suspect. The FBI had initially turned its attention to a militia group from the neighbouring state of Alabama known as the Gadsden Minutemen. Using an artist's impression from witnesses at the scene of the blast, federal agents identified Derek Underwood, one of the militia's members. The Sunday Times has obtained a tape of an FBI interview with members of the Gadsden militia last Sunday in which one, Mike Kemp, boasted that he was an explosives expert. However, Underwood had an alibi: he was in an Alabama bar 100 miles away at the time the bomb went off. Kemp says he was at home with his son. Suspicion began to fall on Jewell when he started to talk to television companies to exploit his role in the bombing. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, which first named him as a suspect, says the FBI believes he planted the bomb so that he could then discover it and become a hero. The newspaper is now apologetic. Born in Danville, Virginia, Jewell has had a chequered career. He left school to do a series of menial jobs, working in a yoghurt shop and at the Marriot Marquis, Atlanta's top hotel where the International Olympic Committee has been staying during the games. In 1990 he obtained a job as a jailer at Habersham County in northern Virginia. He had no arrest powers but was himself arrested for posing as a police officer when he wrestled a man into submission. He later worked as a sheriff's deputy, taking a shot to the chest in one incident when his bullet-proof vest saved him. However, he was demoted back to jailer after crashing his patrol car, allegedly in a race with another officer. Jewell secured low-level accreditation as a security guard outside a pavilion in Centennial Park. On duty eight days ago, he pointed out a green knapsack near a sound tower. He then helped move 11 people out of the tower, which was subsequently wrecked by the explosion. A few minutes later, a phone call on the 911 emergency line from a bank of pay phones three blocks away warned: "There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes." Jewell said he was so close when the bomb went off that it blew him on to his hands and knees. Investigators have measured the walk from the scene of the blast to the pay phone: it takes eight minutes. There were no traces of Jewell's fingerprints or footprints at the scene. The FBI said from the start that the voice on the telephone was American with no distinguishable accent; Jewell has a distinct Southern accent. A spectograph test has failed to match the taped telephone voice with Jewell's pattern of speech. Nor can the FBI find any shop which has sold Jewell piping, batteries or clocks which could have been used to make a bomb. Jewell has consistently protested his innocence. Watson Bryant, his attorney, said Jewell, after five interviews, had now stopped co-operating with the FBI. If the FBI does not charge Jewell, attention will switch back to the Gadsden militiamen. Last week Kemp, their leader, showed off his Kalashnikov rifle, gunpowder and primers to a Sunday Times reporter. Like Jewell, he drives an old pick-up and, until her death, lived with his mother. Kemp claims that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) is trying to frame his organisation because it exposed a "good ole boys" picnic organised by the BATF last year in which signs were put up declaring "nigger checkpoint" and agents were given mock "nigger-hunting licences". The FBI met him and two other members of the militia in a restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama, last Sunday. Kemp was asked whether any BATF officers had been injured in the Olympic blast. He said: "I don't know. I can only hope." * Brian Carr, the British tourist who was nearly killed in the Olympic bombing, left Atlanta hospital yesterday. Carr, 53, who suffered serious head injuries when hit by a hail of shrapnel, said: "I just want to get home and see my kids." ======================================================================= Subject: Olympic bombing-militia conection Date: Mon, 05 Aug 1996 00:52:52 -0700 From: Mike Kemp Organization: Minute Men To: editor@sunday-times.co.uk Dear Editors: Your story concerning my relevancy to the story of the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics somehow manages to be both true and absolutely inaccurate. Much effort was devoted to demonstrate to your reporter that the primary focus of the Gadsden Minute Men Constitutional Militia of ALabama, United States of America, and of the citizen militia, is to require our government to adhere to the limiting document governing its existence. To wit, the Constitution FOR the United States of America. Our primary working uniforms are street clothes, and our primary weapons are video and audio tape recorders, routinesly employed by stealth, but in a completely legal manner. We are journalists with an agenda: the truth, and its exposure. We seek out (easily done) un- and anti-Constitutional actions and laws, and seek to call public attention to our discoveries. Often, this is not so easy, for the media has chosen sides on our side of the ocean. Our sovereign is the individual. Our Constitution begins: *We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union...* This is as clear a statement of sovereignty as can be made. It is said that Americans are a people easily governed but are unable to be ruled. This was proven in the late 18th Century. In other parts our Constitution enumerates broad concepts of Liberty, and lays open the question of the limits of individual freedom while simultaneously caging our government. One of the specifically enumerated rights is *A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.* It is said that the pen is mightier than the sword, and that the only free press is the one which you own. However, the press is more free and the pen more powerful when backed by the sword. BTW, I was the first man certified to operate, as the chief technical person on site, the United States Army's BZ Demilitarization Facility in Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas. At this facility, 750 lb cluster bombs containing nerve agent were disassembled and all components incinerated. I was, as well, the Operations Instructor for site personnel. I served as an eletrical start up engineer at two nuclear power plants. I have two teen aged sons. I am a free man, and am living in a time of decreasing Liberty and decreasing peace. I wish to reverse these trends for the sake of my children and my country. In short, I demand only that my government abide by the rules. Through Liberty there shall be peace and justice. In Liberty, William Michael Kemp Co-founder Chairman, Communications Committee Gadsden Minute Men care of P.O. Box 2 Attalla, Alabama, United States of America 35954